Bizarre eyeball on Florida beach the latest in a weird week of sea creatures washing ashore

It has been a strange week for things washing up on beaches around the world.

On Sunday, a seal was rescued on a beach in Eastbourne, UK, on the coast of the English Channel. The East Sussex Wildlife Rescue and Ambulance Service (WRAS) quickly responded when the animal was reported, and found it with two strange puncture marks and covered in blood.

"We are not sure this stage what has caused the injuries but it may be the rough weather or fighting with another seal." said Trevor Weeks, the founder of WRAS.

The seal was otherwise healthy, and after recovering at RSPCA Mallydams, it should be released back into the wild.

The same day, authorities in Cape Town, South Africa, shut down the beaches at the south end of the city after a 40 ton southern right whale washed up on the beach. Several great white sharks were spotted feeding on the whale until it fully washed up on shore.

"At this stage it is unclear whether the whale was alive when the great white sharks attacked it or whether it died as a result of illness," said disaster management spokesman Wilfred Solomons-Johannes, according to South African newspaper The Star.

The beaches remained closed through Monday, but were re-opened after the whale carcass was removed on Tuesday.

In a similar story, but an ocean away, on Wednesday, reports came in of a 7-metre long humpback whale calf washed up on shore near Burns Beach, north of Perth, Western Australia. The presence of the whale attracted the attention of great white sharks, which swam in — sometimes right under surfers — to feed. Authorities left the beaches in the area open while plans were made to remove the carcass. No statements have been made as to the cause of the whale's death.

In the most bizarre of these events, a bit closer to home, a man walking on Pompano Beach, north of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Wednesday discovered something that seems more suited to a beach in Japan after Godzilla has fought one of his titanic kaiju foes. A giant eyeball.

Roughly 10 centimetres in diameter, the massive blue eye appears to be fully intact. It's just missing the rest of the creature it came from.

"This is definitely an unusual situation, where an eye would be found independent of any other body part," Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told Huffington Post.

"It will probably take a little while to identify the eye," she added, but some possible candidates include a large whale, such as the humpback or grey whale, or maybe a giant squid.